A Queensland miner led to his sister in Victoria’s western district and a mysterious ghost. I told a version of this story live on West Bremer Radio. I also shared a version on the Halloween Special of radio Mixx FM.

Harold Archer was born in 1842 to a well-known and influential family in Tasmania. He was the son of Edward Archer who 1862 built the family’s famous home of “Northbury” in Longford, Tasmania, which is still there today.

Harold’s oldest brother Basil was a member of the Tasmanian parliament, and his youngest brother Ludlow inherited Northbury and was a local councillor and Justice of the Peace

In 1883, Harold was a witness in the infamous Longford murders in which two men were barbarously killed. That’s when he hightailed it north to Queensland on the apparent pretext of chasing his fortune. Harold did his time in Brisbane and Ipswich before finding his way to the goldfields in Charters Towers in north Queensland.

There he became one of the best-known pioneers of the rich Kirk Diggings where he mined for nearly thirty years. He was closely connected with major gold producers like the Himalaya, Three Sisters, and Morning Star mines. Tragedy was never far away including when one of his men fell to his death down a seventy-foot mineshaft.

Harold’s sister Geraldine Archer married Dr. Arthur Bennett and they lived in Hamilton in Victoria’s western district. Their grand home called Hewlett House (pictured top of page) which was built in 1876 and remains a landmark in the centre of town for one very special reason.

Normally when you look at Victorian homes back in England and you see windows bricked over, that’s because the owners were trying to avoid the windows tax because the more windows you had, the more tax you paid.

But at Hewlett House it’s very different. Look at this house today and there’s a bricked-in window on the second floor. That’s where it was said that the ghost of a lady would appear.

The ghost was appearing there so often, and was so unnerving looking down the ain street, that the only way to stop her was to close-in the window. And so that’s what they did, trying to stop the ghost.

There have been only two deaths in the house. The first was the original owner in 1879. His name was Dr. Edmund Vialls but he could not be the lady ghost.

The second death came in 1885. That was of an eight-week-old girl called Nellie Bennett who died there of convulsions. She was the daughter of Harold Archer’s sister Geraldine.

Stricken with grief, Geraldine and her husband moved out of the house and up the hill to “The Manor House”. It was still the family home when Geraldine died twenty-nine years later, and this is where it gets interesting.

Hewlett House was in plain sight from The Manor Huse. For all of those twenty-nine years, Geraldine could clearly watch where her baby died.

The room in which the ghost appeared, with the bricked-in window, that window faces east perfectly positioned to catch the morning sun. This room was actually the nursery where the baby died.

It seems that Geraldine never really left Hewlett House, because in death she kept watch, appearing in the nursery window mourning the loss of her baby Nellie.

But of course, you can’t see the ghost of Harold Archer’s sister Geraldine today because the window got filled-in. But you can see the bricked-in window that so unnerved the locals.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON WEST BREMER RADIO.

CLICK HERE FOR A VERSION TOLD ON THE HALLOWEEN SPECIAL OF RADIO MIXX FM.

Photo credits:
Hewlett House Hamilton, 2022 – Harold Peacock 20241101_113322.
“Northbury”, Longford, Tasmania – National Archives of Tasmania.
Basil Archer, and Ludlow Archer – Parliament of Tasmania, and Find A Grave uploaded by Peter C 2024.
“The Manor House”, Hamilton, Victoria, 2024 – Harold Peacock 20241109_051718.